Wednesday, 16 December 2015

"Only a fool like you will leave Bengaluru, and move to Chennai", are perhaps the first set of words that I heard from almost anyone who got to know that I was moving to Chennai, leaving behind my family at Bengaluru and job at Copal Amba, to search for something that I had no idea about. When CRISIL made their first offer to join them at Chennai, I was very skeptical. I told them that I'd love to join, but not at Chennai. The answer was they could offer me a position in Pune, but for logistical reasons, it didn't make sense. Later on, I was considered for a position in Mumbai, which I thought could be a better option (for Mumbai being the finance capital of India, and all those who want to make it big in the world of Indian Finance end up in Mumbai ultimately), but it was a bit premature for me to move to Mumbai.

Often I have wondered why I considered this option to move to a different location, especially when all my family and friends were in Bengaluru, and I am not a person who makes new friends easily. To my surprise, when I look back at my life, post SSBJ, I have hardly made a few friends. I can only name a couple of people from my college, where we were 400 students, and from 7 years of working, I can perhaps name a couple of them with great difficulty. May be, I never felt the need to make friends, perhaps because I had one best friend in my life who was like 100%. With time and age, people start building new priorities, new dreams and thus, new lives, and in the process, the older ones start getting lost. They say, if you can live with your best friend all your life, there's no one luckier than you. We often thought that we would, but things did turn otherwise. Of course, we were prepared for it, and I'm lying. It was a jolt that I couldn't take for long, and may be, this hasty decision was a result of that. But then, in some way, it wasn't a wrong decision either. CRISIL offered me a better role, and Chennai would be a good way to explore, considering I have been living in Bengaluru for long now.

I moved to Chennai in the first week of November, and I was accommodated in a hotel during the first 15 days of my stay. I had decided to start a new life, but a lot of things started turning the same, and soon, towards the end of November, life turned stale, and by mid of December, life's back to what it was a couple of months ago. Bringing about change in life is an uphill task and when historical happenings keep repeating, it often gets impossible.

The first week at work was amazing. It was a new place and a wonderful work environment. The office is located in a cozy location with the sea on one side and a river on the other side. The city looks awesome from my desk and I was absolutely loving it. The first weekend at Chennai was simply awesome. I spent time with a friend, sorting out several issues. We went out, and had great fun together. And then, it started raining. The rains were here for the entire day, entire night. It was time for Deepawali, and I went to Bengaluru to celebrate the festival. It was a big dream for me to celebrate this Deepawali in a big way but it didn't get possible. However, we did a Honda Dio at home.

Life seemed to have started and exciting things continued to happen. There were some discussions that yield fruitful results, and it all seemed perfect. But then, perhaps, even God too doesn't like perfection. After all, he wants to be the only perfect person in the universe. It started raining heavily in the city, and it became a nightmare to travel. On a couple of days, we were stranded in the office premises all night. The roads next to my office had water logged to waist levels and vehicles just didn't move. The situation was even miserable in other parts of the city where people were struggling to survive. The adventure began. On the next weekend, I decided to go to Bengaluru, and there was no transport option available. I just went to the Koyambedu bus stand, and got on to a rescue bus, which dropped me till Hosur, from where, I headed to Bengaluru. It was a good night, after watching Tamasha, and then dinner. I loved drinking honey after a long time. Its my favorite drink, and I feel heavenly when I do. It was a an exciting morning as I embraced the braces that were gone, and then, I shopped for some dresses. And then, life came back to normal. I headed to Belgaum with my friends to attend Santosh's wedding.

While life till now in Chennai has been exciting, it has been equally disastrous too. As always, I don't know what the future has in store, but I am sure, its going to be great. Someone rightly said, "You may lose anything and everything in life, but one thing that will never be lost is your future. It will always be there for you". Some of my biggest dreams are about to come true, but there is a bit of regret in catching up to those dreams as I have to replan them against the way that I had plan to live them before. I'd soon be heading to a new place to begin a newer phase of life, and hopefully, this beginning will really be a new beginning.